Another of the movies I came across when I was browsing through the various streaming channels and that looked like it might be interesting was a mid-1960s disaster movie called Crack in the World. It certainly was interesting, but was it good?
The movie opens up in Tanganyika, which is not the part of Tanzania on the actual continent of Africa; the "zan" in the country name coming from the island of Zanzibar after the two entities merged in 1964. A bunch of scientists, led by Stephen Sorensen (Dana Andrews) are working on the issue of how to unlock the geothermal heat deep in the earth's mantle and core so as to get a nearly limitless source of clean energy. They've been trying to drill all the way through the crust, which various scientific teams have tried to do in real life, but everybody's been stymied by the heat. Further, in the case of this scientific consortium, the scientists have reached a layer of material too dense to drill through.
Dr. Sorenson comes up a brilliant idea: explode your way through the obstacle. The only explosive powerful enough to do it, however, is a hydrogen bomb. Needless to say, the idea sounds at least slightly risky, and Sorensen's fellow scientist, geologist Dr. Rampion (Kieron Moore), doesn't like the idea because it won't work and could have dire consequences. You might guess from the title of the movie that Rampion is more likely to be right in this scientific debate, but you'd also be getting ahead of yourself.
Before that we need to have a back story involving the main characters. Dr. Sorensen is married to Maggie (Janette Scott), but apparently she had a romance with Rampion before getting married to Stephen; now, there's some strain in the relationship. Making matters much worse, however, is that Stephen has some sort of terminal illness which may be part of why he wants to finish this project before he dies. In any case, his dying would allow Maggie and Rampion to get back together.
Rampion tries to get the British government, through liaison Sir Eggleston (Alexander Knox) to shut down the project, but it's too late, because Sorensen has already set off the nuclear explosion. Sure enough, your guess from two paragraphs ago was right, and there are dire consequences. Those consequences involve a change in the plate tectonics, with a new fault line being opened, causing massive earthquakes and tsunamis in its path. Those threaten the entire existence of mankind unless something can be done to stop it.
The scientists come up with an idea, but as in movies like this, the first idea only works temporarily, and they have to go back to the drawing board in a race against time, leading up to the dramatic climax.
Crack in the World is fairly predictable, even if it came about several years before the all-star disaster film craze of the 1970s. Is it good? Well, it's certainly not bad, and the effects aren't bad for the mid-1960s. It's a darn sight better than At the Earth's Core. But it's still a fairly pedestrian movie. It entertains, but it's not something anyone would call great. I'm glad I watched it, but I won't be searching it out on DVD.
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